A user equipment (UE), e.g., a cellular telephone operating in a wireless communications network, may have various modes of operation that may include an idle mode and a connected mode. In the idle mode, the UE may power down one or more of its operating components/elements for varying periods of time. Powering down one or more of its components assists in conserving battery power (especially as the trend continues to create smaller and smaller electronic devices), as less resources need to be supplied with power. The UE may wake up periodically to monitor paging messages applicable to that UE in case the UE must engage in some activity. Such paging messages may alert the UE to the presence of, e.g., incoming calls, and/or may provide other information. In the connected mode, the UE may actively exchange data with one or more network elements to effectuate, e.g., a voice call or a data call, etc.
A mechanism utilized to control how/when the UE powers down/wakes up may be referred to discontinuous reception (DRX). That is, the UE may periodically monitor paging messages in accordance with a DRX cycle. The DRX cycle may indicate when the UE should wake up to monitor paging messages (when the UE is in Radio Resource Control (RRC) idle mode, i.e., when the RRC connection is released), and when the UE may power down to conserve battery life. If the DRX cycle is too long, then there may be long delays in sending paging messages to the UE. Conversely, if the DRX cycle is too short, then the UE may be monitoring paging messages too frequently, resulting in excessive battery drain.